Operations for performing auctions of various articles, including used cars, art objects, racehorses, flowers, seafood, and livestock have been systematized to varying degrees. For example, in the auction of used cars, an auction system can be configured with multiple terminals and a server for managing the terminals so as to facilitate the auctioning of cars collected at an auction site. Auction participants can make bids not only through the terminals disposed at the site, but also through remote terminals connected via a communications network. However, there are instances in which auction participants may not be able to monitor, continuously or nearly continuously, the auction owing to constraints of location, time, or the like. Even in such instances, though, participants often wish to participate in the bidding process through some mechanism.
Accordingly, there is a need for a system which appropriately enables the automatic bidding on behalf of absent participants that cannot directly attend the auction during the entire time that it is on-going. For example. Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2005-18476 discloses an absentee bidding host or the like, in which two prices (a reference price and a ranking price), as references for bidding, are preliminarily set, and which executes bidding patterns according to which: (1) the host unconditionally makes a bid if the bidding price is below the reference price; (2) the host makes a bid if the bidding price is above the reference price and below the ranking price as long as it is under a slow-down control (a state where the progress speed of the auction is intentionally slowed down) and another bidder is present; and (3) the host unconditionally makes a bid even when the bidding price exceeds the reference price until it comes under a slow-down control regardless of the presence or absence of another bidder.
However, since many conventional absentee bidding systems simply use random numbers for determining bids to make, bidding patterns become monotonous, so that the existence of absentee participants can be distinguished only by on-site participants. In addition, even in the method of Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2005-18476, since the bidding is performed in accordance with a predetermined rule, the bidding can be easily discerned to be automatic bidding once the rule is understood. Namely, the absent participants who participate in an auction system are easily recognized to be absent participants due to the monotony of the bidding pattern, and they may be disadvantaged in attempting to issue winning bids. When recognized as the absent participants, the bidding price may be intentionally raised by on-site bidders or sellers, and they may be forced to win a higher bid. Accordingly, there is no efficient or effective method of increasing a conclusion rate of the auction other than the skill of an auction provider.